Archive

For September, 2009

Sep 30

Knifeshow Forums and Vid Contests

By Jon HartleyNo Comments

Skier vs. snowboarder hate is something best left to Disney movies, and the dudes over at Knife Show Inc prove that there’s some good stuff coming out of the sideways camp. They’ve added a forum to their site that is largely dedicated to providing advice on After Effects and other video related software and technology. I really like the idea of a film group making a forum intended to help people learn and improve on their art form.

In addition to dishing out advice, they’re holding video contests in the forums. They seem pretty informal, but it’s a hell of an opportunity to get your edit exposed to a different audience than it might if you simply put it on NS. Their last contest was based solely on editing and they specifically said that quality of riding doesn’t matter. I like that because the next great ski or snowboard filmer probably isn’t the sickest rider on the hill and he/she doesn’t need to be either.

We’re planning on bringing some edits to BroBomb once winter starts rolling, so I’m sure we’ll be taking advantage of some Knife Show advice.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with their work, this is my personal favorite:


Sep 29

Soapbox

By Jon Hartley3 Comments

soapboxProgression is a myth.

 

 

 

 

Continue reading this entry »

Sep 28

Brain Hurricane

By Jon Hartley6 Comments

brainMy ski brethren, the one footed slides are looking good. I’m not talking about the much maligned rollerblade style slide that Charles Gagnier made famous with his 2005 gold medal run in the X Games. I’m talking entire ski on the rail, forward slide.

It’s been a long time coming. The first time I remember seeing it was when CR Johnson threw it down on a handrail that abutted a wall in Happy Dayz. Since then it has been ignored, ridiculed, or straight up hated on. But I tell you my friends, its day seems to have finally arrived. People are doing them with style and I’m an especially big fan of when it’s done on the top half of a flat-down, and then swapped to a regular slide. Shit’s smooth, stylish, and adds desperately needed variety to the rail tricks possible on skis.

That said, it leads naturally into the eternal question…what’s next? Continue reading this entry »

Sep 25

Real Deal Review: Traveling Circus

By Jon Hartley4 Comments

 

TC1I pledged (kinda) to hate on the shitty movies that come out every year, rather than provide the standard ski mag review of “great riders, great locations, great movie.”  So it’s a little dangerous to start with such a sappy bullshit review, but I love the Traveling Circus series. It is probably the only film project in skiing that I have no qualms about. The damn thing just succeeds on so many levels:

 

  1. The hosts (Will and Andy) aren’t committing any of the sins every skier commits when they are asked to speak on film. These sins include- overdoing a thug persona by making hand gestures and mugging for the camera, attempting to get intellectual with it and philosophizing about the meaning of style or the transcendence of the mountains (I’m talking to you Nimbus), and finally…they aren’t self-consciously posturing /overdoing it. This final sin is relentlessly transgressed by the host of another popular webisode series that shall remain nameless (rhymes with “thug wife”) to the point that I have to look away from the screen because his awkwardness makes me feel squeamish.
  2. It’s a new form. Sure the video-blog format is already kind of played out in internet media, but within skiing it serves a different purpose. It’s a bridge between the old format of annual full length ski movies and the newly ubiquitous web edit. It works as a marketing tool for the sponsor companies (important bc that’s how those fancy cameras are paid for), but it maintains the immediate and personal feel of a midseason edit by your favorite unknown rider.
  3. There’s a plot, and it doesn’t suck. Ski film companies have tried several times to imbue their films with some sort of cohesive theme, but it usually fails miserably. You’ve got the absurdist radio show of Tanner’s WSKI, MSP’s (lame ass) attempt with Yearbook, or Poorboyz more recent film Reasons. They all SUCKED.
  4. Traveling Circus doesn’t suck.
Sep 23

Droppin Science (from 2004)

By Jon HartleyNo Comments

scientistI’m sure none of you are reading this blog before poring over the NS forums with your cup of coffee or OJ or whatever it is you kids drink these days. So you are well aware that skiing’s version of the McCurry vs. McDonald’s  legal battle is about to go DOWN! If you somehow missed that thread, it states that Warren Miller Entertainment (a soulless entity run by Miller’s kid) is suing Level 1 Productions for using their intellectual property (i.e. Warren Miller’s voice). Now I never did make it to law school, but that seems like a rather ridiculous claim. Judging from the public opinion poll that is NS, most 15-year-old boys also agree that this be some buuuullshit. There are boycotts and hellstorms promised by every kid from Cali, to Minnesota, to the icy East. As a supporter of peaceful social action in any context, my instinct is to throw some wood on that fire and yell BURN BABY BURN, or more accurately- boycott baby boycott!

 BUT after careful consideration of the evidence before me- Do NOT boycott. In fact, go buy that Warren Miller movie that you have ignored every time you pass it in the Walmart DVD section. You see, boycotts don’t work in the skiing world. We are all too materialistic. When we’re told we shouldn’t buy something, we actually end up buying more than we would have before.

 Where am I getting this asinine bullshit? Continue reading this entry »

Sep 22

Soapboxin

By Jon Hartley1 Comment

soapbox

 

You’ll have to forgive me in advance on this one, but I’m about to do some soapboxin’. You see, I have an irrational love of mini shred. You might even call me a mini shred evangelist. For those who don’t know exactly what mini shred is, well its really anything at all. I guess it tends to fit into the broad spectrum of what we call “urban,” but there’s plenty of mini shred to be had at your local resort too. I guess I’ll sum it up as a creative re-imagining of the way small things can be ridden. How’s that for specific?

That lame attempt at a definition notwithstanding, mini shred is the SHIT! It doesn’t require you to live in a park mecca with perfectly groomed features and the stuff you need is usually accessible at little to no cost. The only real limit is your own creativity. It has a long and venerable history in just about any “street” oriented sport you can think of, and its time has come in skiing. Enough riding laps with your friends as if it’s the finals of a slopestyle event. Go find something small and try to do something you’ve never thought to do on skis.

Sep 21

?->hipster->skateboarder->snowboarder->skier

By Jon Hartley1 Comment

The incomparable Liam Downey once wrote that skiing copies snowboarding like an older brother, and skateboarding is the posterboy that snowboarding pins to its metaphorical wall. He said it, and it is true. Let’s move on.

So where does this long chain of self conscious replication end? Well that’s a hard question, but it most certainly extends beyond skateboarding. You see, skateboarding’s style comes from spending some time in the trendy parts of any major city and then emulating the most ridiculous butthole of a hipster you can find there. This makes sense, because by nature skateboarders spend more time in major cities than any of the aforementioned sports. Therefore, they are there to behold the hipster ridiculousness pouring out of a Man Man (or any other band nobody has ever heard of) concert .

So for all you ski fashionistas, if you want to leapfrog the biting all the way to the front of the line then grab the keys to mom’s Audi, leave the McMansion, and head on down to your local major city to get inspired/bite that shit hard. If you’re near Philly I recommend anywhere in N. Liberties or Fishtown. If NYC isn’t too far, I bet just about anywhere in Brooklyn would do the trick…otherwise you’re on your own, but it can’t really be that hard.

If big cities scare you then just jump on www.latfh.com and do a little mix and match. It’d be hard to go wrong with anything this guy is working with:

hip

Sep 21

Does it still take us two years?

By Jon HartleyNo Comments

About a month back a snowboard blogger at YoBeat.com wrote a pretty damn clever article that included a top ten list detailing why “freeskiing” is lame. It was snarky, pretty funny, and not really that insulting at all. Well a bunch of NS’ers who apparently had their senses of humor removed at birth got on the site and did the worst possible thing…defended themselves against a joke. Let me explain something: once you start debating the points made in a satire, you’ve lost. Continue reading this entry »

Sep 21

A Real Review: SPK boot

By Jon Hartley2 Comments
SPK Kaos boot.

SPK Kaos boot.

After perusing the latest edition of what Freeskier calls an Annual Gear Guide, I could write a week’s worth of posts on the complete lack of real product reviews in the ski world. I’ll try not to wear the hater hat for too long, but let’s face it, there are shit products out there. But of course you would never know this if you relied on the sole surviving print mag our fledgling corner of skiing has left. Each ski gets a stoke factor (which means literally nothing), and the only products that get a more thorough look are pro setups. The LAST thing that matters in a gear guide are pro setups. They’re paid to ride this shit, hell I’d ride any damn thing if you paid me to do it. I’d rather hear what Joey the pizza guy in Truckee is riding, cuz his ass paid real hard earned cash for his setup. That means something.
ANYWAY…on to our review:
Continue reading this entry »